All up in my face(book)

Hello and good morning in this second month of 09. Yes, February, with its non-conformist number of days and status as "Most Mispronounced Month." Seriously, how many of you ignore the first R out of sheer laziness? I know I do from time to time, and that's just not right. No other letter in any other month's name is so blatantly skipped over. I think it's all due to our minds wanting it to sound like January to form a pattern. Yeah, that's the theory I'm going with. It narrowly edged out the "It's just too difficult to pronounce" theory. To summarize my thoughts on the matter, here's a haiku:

O February:

Rebel month with fewer days

and skipped-over R.

Yeah, I don't know why I went there either. Let's get to a topic, shall we? I would like to address a current cultural phenomenon and my private battle with conforming to the wishes of the masses. Yes, I'm just like February. What is this phenomenon? Facebook, the social networking website.

Some time ago, I received an invitation to be someone's "friend" on Facebook. I said that I wasn't really into that stuff, so I wasn't going to sign up. Then I got two more requests about a week later, and I kind of caved in a little. I created a profile with nothing but my name, location, and a picture of our dog Hallie. Every once in a while, I'd get another request from someone I knew. I'd log in, say yes to the request, and then log out. That was the extent of my Facebook usage.

Then something happened. Apparently there's a feature in which the server tells people who they might know. After accepting the friend request from a former student worker of mine, I received around 20 more requests from other student workers within two days. I still just accepted them and moved on with one exception: I put a note on my page saying that while I would love to get in contact with each and every one of them, I don't use that site and would prefer an email. I then listed my address, and two or three of them actually took my suggestion.

The strange thing about this whole thing is that my best friends weren't my "friends." Only recently did my friends Dusty, Lisa, and favorite brother officially join the ranks. Jon, one of my best friends since 9th grade, is on Facebook but we just haven't become friends yet. I suddenly had over 50 "friends" on this thing, and so I put up a new note saying the same thing as the other one. Within twenty minutes, I had a comment from Dusty saying, "How about you just give in and use the site." Then he called me a name which I didn't appreciate. Less than an hour later, my favorite brother commented: "What is it? Are you too good for the site that we all choose to use to keep in contact? It's good enough for us, but not for you. I'd say majority rules." And the he too called me a name. Do you see what's going on here? It's nothing short of bullying, and I'm being publicly chastised for trying to be an individual. I didn't realize I signed up for Communist Facebook.

Here's the other thing that bugs me about the site: people are frickin' fanatics about it. You can update your "status," which is much more fleeting than it sounds. I wasn't exactly expecting something along the lines of, "Peter Klein is now landed gentry instead of indentured servant," but nor was I expecting how it's actually used. Here are some recent status updates from my "friends":

"...is getting ready for work"

"...is doing absolutely nothing of importance"

"...is getting ready to head to the gym"

"...is shopping at whole foods"

You're kidding me, right? To fit in, I'm supposed to post on a website when I'm doing something, doing nothing, or getting ready to do something or nothing? I don't think of myself as an extremely private person (even though you can't spell "private person" without Peter), but I don't want to share that level of life detail with everyone. At the same time, I don't mean to be rude, but I don't care to know those details about anyone else's life. Yes, we went to junior high together and it was fun, but I don't care if you're "having a hard time focusing at work." It just comes across as very self-important to think that other people need to know what you're doing right now. "Oh my God, she's at Whole Foods? I wonder what she's getting! I won't try chatting with her now because she's not at her computer - she's at Whole Foods! I like Whole Foods too! I wonder which one she's at and if we like the same things from there. When her status changes, maybe I'll chat with her and see what she bought and we can talk about how alike we are." (Wow, I sound like a 70 year-old curmudgeon sounding off against new-fangled technology, don't I? I'm sure that's an attractive quality.)

I have one last rant on this topic, and I think this might sway any of you still on the fence. People send polls and quizzes that are eerily close to annoying email forwards or chain letters. "At the end, choose 25 people..." it says. It doesn't say that bad luck will befall me if I don't do that, but since everyone knows everyone else's every move, it's obvious who did and didn't comply with the directions. One of the greatest coups of my life was in college when I received a chain letter email. It said that if I sent it to ten people, I would be exempt from ever having to respond to another chain letter for the rest of my life. Nothing bad would happen to me as a result of ignoring future chain letters because this one would protect me. How sweet is that action? And now, I have friends and "friends" trying to mess with that shit. Can't they see I'm protected? I don't want to list 25 random things about me or find out which 1980's sitcom character would be my best friend. (It's gotta be Balki, right?)

All I want from this site is to email occasionally with some folks with whom I've lost contact to see what they've been up to. That's it. I don't need to know when they're getting ready for work or what movie they're in line to see. Does that make me a bad person? I hope not.

And with that, let's update our statuses on over to the Car Watch.

I saw a license plate that was a bald-faced liar (as opposed to all of those hairy-faced liars out there). It read, "ITS 04." No, it's not. It hasn't been for a while, in fact. "ISNT 04" would've fit just fine and been correct 99 years out of 100. Even if the car is a 2004 model and was purchased in January of 2004, the car's owner was still very shortsighted in his/her plate selection due to the ephemeral nature of it actually making sense.

My homey Rockabye saw a Mini Cooper with an interesting plate. Over the past couple of years, he's seen a bunch of personalized Minis. As you might expect, they play upon the small nature of the car. This particular plate appears to be doing the same thing: "MININTZ." But then you have to ask yourself what the rest of it means. Is this short for "Mini nuts?" If so, I'm sorry to hear that. Is it "Mini Nazi?" If so, I'm really, really sorry to hear that. Are those the owner's initials? If so, why not take out the middle one and put a 4 in there to make it "MINI4NZ?" Are they going for "Mini nights?" If so, what the hell does that even mean? Nights out in the Mini? I guess. Basically, I don't really get or like that plate.

But I like this one even less: "PRFR RED." Oh yeah, it was on a blue fucking car! There's a space, so it's clearly not short for "preferred." Instead, it's either someone stating a preference for red things that just doesn't happen to extend to the automotive world or someone who would've preferred that his/her blue car was red instead. In that second scenario, if it's such a strong car color preference that the license plate is devoted to the lack of redness, why not just wait until you can get a red car? People really confuse me sometimes.

Ok, I'm outa here. This has seemed like an angrier post than normal, and that pisses me off, which makes it an extremely vicious cycle. I hope you all have very pleasant weekends and weeks, my friends. Happy half-birthday to our friend Laura on Sunday, and I'll be back here next Friday with more of what's on my mind. In the meantime, please feel free to email me at ptklein@gmail.com with anything at all. Take care, everyone.